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INTERACTIVE LEARNING FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION
K. S. Shodieva
As society develops, the nature and function of professional education changes. The main purpose of higher education is not only to teach and develop skills in students, but also to help them develop independence and self-direction. The nature of teacher-student interaction changes as well. A student becomes an active participant, rather than a passive receptacle, and the teacher becomes the facilitator of this process. Teacher-student interactions become a problem.
A teacher in higher education should know about psychology and be able to maintain a dialogue with students to ensure each student's creative growth. These tasks may be completed by deploying interactive learning methods in higher education. Theoretical approaches to interactive learning are based on the concepts of individual personality and boosting learning and cognitive activity. The new principles of education, humanization and democratization have created the need to radically revise the content, forms, methods and means of learning and develop a new type of teacher.
Various forms, means and methods of active pedagogy have been referred to as "interactive". Interactionism is a new theory in contemporary psychology and sociology. It involves reviewing the development and life activities of an individual in the context of social interaction. Researchers studying the essence of interaction believe that it is determined by the individual characteristics of its actors, social situations, predominant behavior strategies, goals of the interaction participants and possible controversies arising in the course of collaboration and socialization. Interactive learning is regarded as one of the most important educational resources that helps intensify the process of learning, i.e. considerably increase its development potential, deepen and expand the educational content being mastered.
Currently, in higher education, the requirements and quality of education for a specialized degree are expanding and market competition for education services continues to grow. Therefore, interactive learning should be regarded as a real way to intensify learning. Interactive learning is the key to designing and implementing intensive higher education that meets the criteria of quality, continuity, competitiveness and mobility. It should be noted that the intensity of higher education does not exclude its
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fundamental nature. It’s important to build an educational process that promotes the maximum growth of each student’s personal and psychophysiological capabilities in order to use educational resources to the greatest extent possible. Intensive education provides the greatest achievement of an individual's professional and educational goals with optimal expenditure of resources. Interactive methods are adequate to the personality-oriented paradigm. These are the forward-looking methods that have a future in the changing education environment of the information age.
While conducting experimental work, the author deemed interactive learning to be a cognitive method implemented through collaboration between students. In the course of interactive learning, all participants of the educational process interact with each other, exchange information, collaborate in solving problems, simulate situations and assess their peers' and their own behaviors--immersing themselves in the atmosphere of real business cooperation in problem solving.
Forms and methods of interactive learning include the following: heuristic conversation, presentations, discussions, "brainstorming", "round table discussions", "business games", project competitions with subsequent discussion, role-playing games, training, collective solving of creative tasks, case studies, hands-on training, group and individual exercises, simulation of operational processes or situations, etc.
Forms and methods of interactive learning may be divided into the following categories: discussion-based, game-based and training-based. Discussion as a technique of interactive learning involves an open discussion or verbal exchange of knowledge, judgments, ideas or opinions on a debatable question or problem. Business games as a technique of interactive learning involve simulating real mechanisms and processes. They include the following: simulation games, operational games, roleplaying games, "business theatre", psychodrama and sociodrama. Organizational activity games and organizational educational games as techniques of interactive learning are forms of collective thinking activity, which encourage learning. The case study method is an interactive learning technique involving the review of economic or social cases from real life. It is a complex and multifaceted learning technique representing a specific kind of analytical research activity. The case study method was regarded as a synergistic technique designed to develop procedures for immersing a group into a situation and generating knowledge. Project work in the context of education involves a purpose-oriented learning activity
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undertaken in a laboratory environment specifically designed by a teacher, enabling a student to act independently and achieve a specific hands-on result.
Workshops are an integrated form of interactive learning. Workshops may be of the following types: (a) sensitivity training (behavior projection) is based on leadership, motivation and group dynamics communication theories; (b) managerial training is designed to develop leadership and organizational capabilities in the participants; (c) video training is based on the use of videos. Due to their high educational effectiveness, interactive methods as a form of intensive education set rather high requirements that motivate students.
Analysis of interactive methods enables us to identify some stages of their implementation. At the initial stages of learning, interactive methods play the role of diagnostic procedures that help discover the nature of each student’s motivation to learn and helps determine each student’s level of development. The stage of revealing the therapeutic potential of the interactive methods in the context of their use in the educational process has obvious advantages. Discussions, case studies, brainstorm sessions and role or simulation games contribute to a favorable psychological atmosphere in a learning session, boost the speaking and intellectual activity of students, increase their interest and self-confidence, reduce anxiety and create a meaningful stage for communication. The sustained and systematic use of interactive methods develops an ability to cope with complex learning problems in students.
Interactive methods not only help training specialists instrumentally in the system of higher education but also significantly intensify the learning process, becoming integral to an overall improvement of the system.
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